Sunday, May 22, 2011

Poetry Is Stupid

Poetry is stupid it is really dumbIt makes no sense at all it solves nothing does nothing Even a mountain makes sense it walks around covered in snowAnd holds the sky upMountains aren’t stupid poetry is stupidA man becomes a giant among the starsTake a chair, Mr. Razamov, and study this hungerOf gulls as they fish from the edge of the iceFrom the South Pole to the deserts of MoroccoAnd all points in between I challenge you to meet nature face to &nbspfaceAnd tell me what is dumber the naked truth or a poemWhile I am not a Shaolin student, I can tell you thisWhen we look at very distant galaxiesWe see them as they were thousands of millions of years agoWhen the light rays started on their journey to usMy hand trembles like a treeJingling skeletons in an elevator Poetry is stupid it is not the same as antifreezeWhat shall I do with this absurdityI will call it a crepitationI don’t know what’s dumber a poem or a seesawI would say a seesawIn a poem about seesawsThe rain comes and gets everything wetIn the playground and the cityA man walks by with a cellphone Cupped to his ear and tells his loverThat poetry is stupid it has ruined his lifeThe man who knows everything is a foolThis is a terrible thing to sayBut true a fish walks out of the water with a bluntHard head thick skin and gets a job at BoeingYou see how stupid a poem can beI remember writing a poem once I stayed up all nightAnd when it was done I took out the garbageAnd realized nothing had changed the world was the sameTo hell with you and your poetry what the hell do you know about &nbspitIt’s early summer the rivers are swollen A baby claps the bearded face of Socrates

3 comments:

Mickey O'Connor
said...

Crepitation ? I had to look that one up. Crackling, like crepe paper. John, did you know that Samuel Johnson made the first modern dictionary ? Modern in the sense that before Johnson, at least in English & I believe in other languages, a dictionary merely gave literal definitions of words & Johnson's dictionary did that & supplied instances of the word used in context via various Literary works. I have a facsimile copy of that dictionary , it's 2,400 pages or so, 81/2 X 11 & the print is small. I use it to steal lines from. I don't know if my life was ruined by poetry or was ruined before I became a poet. It got awfully ruined, tho. Now I feel like a fighting rooster, better than I ever felt, even if my life is ruined. Maybe everybody's life is ruined & only devout Buddhist monks & certain poets & skid row drunks understand this. I don't know, that last line is overly romantic.

I knew Johnson had made the first modern dictionary, but to this day I still haven't seen it. I used to spend hours in the OED. It was like word heaven. The problem with this poem is that it is not stupid enough. I need to fail better next time. I stole that last line from William Carlos Williams. "Struggle of Wings."

yes, more stupid, fail better, yes, steal lines... I've read Worstward Ho by S. Beckett probably 10-20 times & the whole thing is basically him forcing himself to write & picture the scenes to write before he writes them. " say a body where none. say a mind where none. " he slowly imagines a scene & writes it out & sometimes I thought he was describing his own body & mind & other times the scenes on the page & sometimes I think he goes back & forth.

About Me

John Olson is the author of Backscatter: New And Selected Poems, from Black Widow Press, Souls Of Wind, a novel about the notorious French poet Arthur Rimbaud in the American West, from Quale Press, and The Nothing That Is, an autobiographical novel from Ravenna Press. Larynx Galaxy, a collection of essays and prose poetry, appeared in June, 2012, from Black Widow Press. The Seeing Machine , a novel about French painter Georges Braque, appeared from Quale Press in fall 2012.